Posts Tagged ‘Ackland Art Museum’

The Ackland Art Museum announced today that its Museum Store, currently located on East Franklin Street in downtown Chapel Hill, NC, will relocate to inside the Museum building, opening for business on Friday, Oct. 6, 2017. The Store will be open at its current location on Franklin Street through Sunday, Sept. 17, 2017.

“It feels like a homecoming,” said Katie Ziglar, Director of the Ackland Art Museum. “We are very pleased that we can bring the Museum Store to the Museum. It is an amenity people wish for while visiting the Ackland.”

“We have valued being a part of the fabric of Franklin Street since May of 2011, and have felt very supported by the town of Chapel Hill, the Downtown Partnership, and our customers,” said Alice Southwick, store manager. “As we have always been part of the Ackland Art Museum, it does feel right to be setting up shop inside the Museum’s building. We think our customers will be very pleased.”

The new Ackland Museum Store will include more products that tie to art and exhibitions on view in the Ackland’s galleries, a move that reflects popular demand. The Store will continue to sell works of art by local, regional, and international artists.

“We look forward to being able to offer shopping at the Museum Store—which, in turn, financially supports the Ackland’s exhibitions and programs—as an experience that immediately follows visiting our galleries,” said Ziglar.

Once inside the Museum building, the Store’s hours will follow the Museum’s: Wednesday through Saturday 10am to 5pm and Sunday 1 to 5pm. Like the Museum, the Store will be open until 9pm during the Chapel Hill-Carrboro 2nd Friday ArtWalk evenings.

Featuring a year-round calendar of special exhibitions and dynamic public programs, the Ackland Art Museum—located on the historic campus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—encourages visitors to engage with the artistic past as well as with living artists from around the world. The Ackland’s holdings consist of more than 18,000 works of art, featuring significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art, African art, and North Carolina pottery. In addition, the Ackland has North Carolina’s premier collections of Asian art and works on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs). Its global collection of artworks from antiquity to the present makes the Ackland uniquely able to advance the teaching and research missions of the University.

The Ackland Art Museum is located at 101 South Columbia Street, just south of Franklin Street, on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC’s Ackland Art Museum has received its largest gift ever, donated from alumnus Sheldon Peck and his wife Leena – valued at $25 million.

The unprecedented commitment includes an $8 million endowment to support a new curator and future acquisitions and an art gift of 134 primarily 17th-century European masterworks, valued at $17 million, including seven works by Rembrandt van Rijn.

With the Peck Collection gift, the Ackland becomes the first public university art museum in the United States to own a collection of drawings by Rembrandt and only the second university art museum in the nation to do so.

The masterworks are a major collection of Dutch and Flemish drawings built by the Pecks over the last four decades. Along with the Rembrandts, the collection includes nearly 100 17th-century Dutch landscape, genre and figural compositions by artists such as Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen and Jacob van Ruisdael, as well as a dozen 17th-century Flemish drawings by masters like Pieter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Paul Bril. A group of 15 18th- and 19th-century Dutch drawings is also part of the collection.

One of the Rembrandt drawings in the collection bears an inscription in the artist’s own handwriting, which until this donation was the last known drawing with such an inscription remaining in private hands.

“This amazing gift of European Golden Age art treasures – preserved for nearly 400 years and lovingly collected by the Pecks over the past 40 years – delights us today with its timeless beauty and will forever inspire future generations of students, scholars and visitors that come to our historic campus,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “These drawings are a remarkable window through which we glimpse past cultures and times through the eyes of masters. We are honored by the inestimable value of the Pecks’ gift because it advances Carolina’s public mission to serve the people of North Carolina and makes the university a destination for people of all ages from around the world for all time.”

The Pecks’ gift includes the Peck Collection Endowment Fund and the Sheldon Peck Curatorship Fund, dedicated to the care and enhancement of the Peck Collection, including conservation, digitization and cataloging, as well as funds for the acquisition of other European and American masterworks created before 1950.

The endowment will also enable the Ackland to create and support a new position at the museum: the Sheldon Peck curator of European and American art and curator of the Peck Collection. This is the Ackland’s first full-time endowed position.

“We are overjoyed with the Pecks’ exceptionally generous gift of art, funds for its stewardship and support for future acquisitions,” said Ackland Art Museum Director Katie Ziglar. “Thanks to the new curatorial position their endowment also provides, we look forward to organizing a series of special exhibitions focusing on masterworks from the Peck Collection. Works of such high achievement and quality will fascinate and delight Ackland visitors for decades to come.”

With their gift, the Pecks aspire to offer the public a deeper appreciation for the Dutch masters’ celebration of beauty in the everyday.

“The exceptional vision and profound humanity of the Dutch masters’ drawings still have the power to surprise and delight 400 years after their creation. I hope many will experience the pleasure and awe these works still elicit in me every time I study one,” said Sheldon Peck. “I am thrilled the Ackland, with its distinguished tradition of commitment to the research and exhibition of drawings, will now be the steward of what Leena and I have brought together.”

Peck, a native of Durham, is a prominent orthodontic specialist, educator and art collector. After receiving his undergraduate degree from Carolina in 1963 and his doctorate from the UNC School of Dentistry in 1966, he moved to Boston for a residency in orthodontics and then entered private practice and academics. Peck was a clinical professor of developmental biology at the Harvard University School of Dental Medicine for 20 years, and served as an adjunct professor of orthodontics at Carolina’s School of Dentistry.

He has generously donated art to the Ackland since 1988, when he gave a drawing by Allart van Everdingen to the museum in honor of his much-admired older brother and Carolina alumnus, Harvey Peck. Works of art from the Pecks’ collection, many of them exhibited for the first time, were on view in the 1999 Ackland travelling exhibition “Fresh Woods and Pastures New.”

Peck has been a member of the Ackland’s national advisory board since 1987, and he and his wife are longtime supporters of the museum’s “Art For Lunch” lecture series.

“We are thrilled that a longtime board member has made such an unparalleled gift to the Ackland, which brings the museum to a new level of importance in the region and in our country,” said Kate Nevin, Ackland advisory board chair.

About the Ackland Art Museum

Featuring a year-round calendar of special exhibitions and dynamic public programs, the Ackland Art Museum – located on the historic campus of UNC-Chapel Hill – encourages visitors to engage with the rich legacy of the artistic past as well as with living artists from around the world. The Ackland’s holdings consist of more than 18,000 works of art, featuring significant collections of European masterworks, 20th-century and contemporary art, African art, North Carolina pottery and folk art. Additionally, the Ackland holds North Carolina’s premiere collections of Asian art and works on paper (drawings, prints and photographs). This universal collection of artworks from antiquity to the present makes the Ackland uniquely able to advance the teaching and research missions of the University.

About the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service. A member of the prestigious Association of American Universities, Carolina regularly ranks as the best value for academic quality in U.S. public higher education. Now in its third century, the University offers 77 bachelor’s, 110 master’s, 64 doctorate and seven professional degree programs through 14 schools and the College of Arts and Sciences. Every day, faculty, staff and students shape their teaching, research and public service to meet North Carolina’s most pressing needs in every region and all 100 counties. Carolina’s 317,000-plus alumni live in all 50 states and 156 other countries. More than 167,000 live in North Carolina.

For further information contact Emily Bowles by calling 919/843-3675 or by e-mail to (emily.bowles@unc.edu).

The Ackland Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, announced today that, following a national search, Katie Ziglar has been appointed as the Director of the Museum. Ziglar is currently the Director of External Affairs at the Freer|Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, a position she has held since 2003.

Katie Ziglar, who will begin as Director of the Ackland on July 6, 2016, brings to the position nearly 30 years’ experience as a museum professional. While at the Freer|Sackler, she substantially increased annual fund-raising, from $3M in FY07 to $12M in FY12, and participated in the leadership of the $1.5B Smithsonian campaign.

She has also contributed substantially to the successful management of other major cultural organizations including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, and the National Gallery of Art.

“We are delighted that Katie Ziglar will join the Ackland Art Museum as the new director,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “Katie brings significant experience from her work at the Smithsonian Institution, where she contributed to increasing visibility and financial stability. We look forward to her leadership and vision for the Ackland Art Museum.”

“Katie’s experience with the Smithsonian Institution, most recently at the Freer|Sackler Galleries, brings a great depth and knowledge of building community affinity groups in working with collections, especially their Asian collection,” said James Keith Brown, chair of the Ackland Art Museum’s National Advisory Board. “Her background is key for the Ackland, given our various constituents, and our focus on Asian and contemporary works of art.”

Ziglar received a BA in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was a John Motley Morehead scholar, and an MA in Islamic art and architecture from American University in Cairo. She currently serves as a board member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Morehead-Cain Scholarship Fund.

“I am honored to have been selected to serve as Director of the Ackland Art Museum, and I look forward to returning to UNC-Chapel Hill in this position,” said Ziglar. “The Ackland is a vibrant, inspiring resource for this important global public research university as well as the entire Triangle community, the state of North Carolina, and our nation. I am eager to build on the incredible work of the Museum’s staff to further and deepen the Ackland’s role in scholarship and especially public engagement.”

The Ackland Art Museum is located on the historic campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Ackland’s holdings consist of more than 17,000 works of art, featuring significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art, African art, North Carolina pottery, and folk art. In addition, the Ackland has North Carolina’s premier collections of Asian art and works on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs). In 2016-17, the Ackland-organized exhibition “Fever Within: The Art of Ronald Lockett” will travel to the American Folk Art Museum, New York, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. GA.

The Ackland Art Museum is located at 101 South Columbia Street on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

Museum hours are Wednesday through Saturday 10-5, and Sunday 1-5. Admission is free.

Taking inspiration from its fall exhibition, “The Sahmat Collective: Art and Activism in India since 1989” (on view through Jan. 5, 2014), the Ackland Art Museum invites the public to take part in “Art on the Move” on Sunday, Oct. 6, at Festifall in downtown Chapel Hill, NC.

Following the original “Art on the Move” project, organized by the Sahmat Collective in India 12 years ago, participants of all ages are encouraged to come and build mobile artworks that reflect their vision of social justice using their bikes as a foundation.

On the morning of Sunday, Oct. 6, 2013, (9 – 11:30am), the Ackland Art Museum will transform University Square parking lot (Franklin St. and Church St.) into a community workshop before Festifall opens. Artists from the Paperhand Puppet Intervention will be on hand to assist participants with transforming recycled materials donated by The Scrap Exchange, as well as reused materials brought by participants, into mobile artworks on bikes. Following the construction party, finished bicycles will be displayed at a pop-up exhibition on Franklin St. during Festifall (noon – 6pm).

Invited judges will award prizes for mobile sculptures in the following categories: “Most Beautiful,” “Most Provocative,” and “Largest.” All are welcome to vote for the “People’s Choice” award.

At the Ackland’s Festifall booth (#48, near the Franklin Hotel), members of the public are invited to make a license plate for their bike with a slogan for peace and harmony.

All are invited to learn more about Sahmat by visiting the Ackland exhibition “The Sahmat Collective,” which will be open from 1 – 5pm on Festifall Sunday and will host a free tour about Art and Activism at 2pm.

WHAT TO BRING:
your bike, trike, or wagon (bike baskets, paniers, and trailers might help transform your bike into a platform, too!)
some lightweight building materials (foam, cardboard, and other recycled materials) and some decorative materials (fabric, paint, and ribbons) to supplement The Scrap Exchange materials, your creativity and your vision of social justice in our community.

About the Sahmat Collective

Formed in Delhi in 1989, in the weeks after playwright, actor, and activist Safdar Hashmi was fatally attacked by political thugs while performing a street play, Sahmat is an expansive network of Indian artists and intellectuals—painters, sculptors, writers, poets, musicians, actors, and activists—who create powerful and vibrant works of art in defense of freedom of expression and in celebration of secular, egalitarian values.

Among their many projects, Sahmat initiated “Art on the Move” in 2001, inviting artists to create expressive mobile sculptures which embodied the working class: rickshaws, bicycles, and pushcarts. By inviting sixteen finalists to parade their works through the streets of Delhi, Sahmat hoped to bring attention to issues of art, mobility, and public space. One of these original mobile sculptures is on view in the Ackland’s exhibition, which showcases works by more than 60 artists. Watch a video about the original “Art on the Move.”

The Ackland Art Museum is located on the historic campus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Ackland’s holdings consist of more than 17,000 works of art, featuring significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art, African art, North Carolina pottery, and folk art. In addition, the Ackland has North Carolina’s premier collections of Asian art and works on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs). As an academic unit of the University, the Ackland serves broad local, state, and national constituencies.

For more information, please contact: Emily Bowles by e-mail at (esbowles@email.unc.edu), call 919/843-3675 or visit (www.ackland.org).

The renowned museum at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, will celebrate its transition to 100 percent LED lighting – a money-saving, energy-conscious move that also enhances spectators’ views of the exhibits – with a June 20 Open House from 6 to 8pm. It is free to the public.

“Our staff did a great deal of research to make sure that the switch to LED would not only save energy, but would also be the right decision for our works of art,” said Emily Kass, Ackland’s director. “The new LED lighting dramatically improves our visitors’ experience, as the art works’ colors are more accurate and vivid.”

The museum worked with the campus’s Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee over the past two years to explore ways in which the Ackland could reduce its energy consumption. RESPC paid approximately $52,000 dollars to fully fund the transition of gallery lights to more efficient light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs from Durham-based LED innovator Cree, Inc.

With less heat being produced by the more than 400 Cree LED lights, the Ackland’s HVAC systems run much more efficiently, especially in the summer months, further reducing its electricity consumption and carbon emissions.

Cree estimates the new lights will use 117,000 fewer kilowatt hours per year and will save the museum, and thus UNC, more than $13,000 dollars annually.

“The Renewable Energy Special Projects Committee is always looking for new areas of the UNC campus in which to reduce energy consumption,” said RESPC co-chair Piya Kerdlap, whose student organization manages the funds raised by the $4-dollar-per-semester Student Renewable Energy Fee. “Not only did the Ackland have great potential for saving energy, but it presented an opportunity for our organization to reach out to a more diverse audience and raise awareness about the importance of energy efficiency and conservation.

“What made this project unique were the additional benefits of improved display conditions for the art works. The Ackland’s need for LED lighting clearly resonated with the mission of the RESPC and was well worth the investment.”

In addition to a significant energy reduction, the LED lamps enhance the visual appearance of art in the museum. Featuring Cree TrueWhite Technology, the new bulbs provide exceptional color accuracy and rendering, enabling a fuller spectrum to be visible and color contrasts to be seen more accurately with the human eye as compared to most other artificial lamps.

Also key to the Ackland: LED lighting emits essentially no infrared or ultraviolet light, both of which can damage all kinds of works of art — particularly works on paper (drawings, prints and photographs) and textiles.

“As a local Triangle business, we are pleased to help the Ackland Art Museum transition to 100 percent energy-efficient LED lighting, offering an enhanced visual experience for museum visitors while delivering significant savings on energy and maintenance costs,” said Greg Merritt, vice president of lighting at Cree. “The Cree LRP-38 and LBR-30 LED lamps installed offer a unique combination of technical innovations to deliver enhanced color quality, efficacy and lifetime to the Ackland, where beautiful, high-quality lighting is essential.”

The museum estimates an energy savings of 87 percent per year over the previous lighting, resulting in a reduction of 73 tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

CUTTING THE WATTS – AND DOLLARS
Ackland Art Museum’s new lighting system is both energy efficient and cost-saving. A quick look:

In conjunction with the final week of its current exhibition of contemporary art, “More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s,” the Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, is pleased to present the interactive, ephemeral art work “Chalk” by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla.

From 1pm on Monday, Mar. 25, 2013, through 1pm, Wednesday, Mar. 27, 2013, twelve large pieces of chalk – each 64 inches long, eight inches in diameter, and weighing approximately 100 pounds – will be publically on view and available for use in Union Plaza, in front of the F.P. Graham Student Union, at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Since 1998, Allora and Calzadilla have placed oversized chalk sticks within public spaces in many different cities around the world. Made available to passers-by, “Chalk” encourages written and drawn exchanges between citizens and engagement with the urban landscape itself. Like many other works of art in the exhibition “More Love,” the pieces of chalk are catalysts, requiring action on the part of individuals other than the artists to activate them. Although Chalk has been staged in several different cities, each iteration of the project brings its own idiosyncratic response and allows the work to maintain a sense of site-specificity, reflecting the particular concerns and conditions of a given locale. By enlarging and unleashing a conventional stick of chalk on the campus of a leading research university, Allora and Calzadilla transform a pedagogical tool of the classroom into an instrument of communication and critique. The Union Plaza, already a popular forum for self-expression and knowledge sharing, will be further transformed, if only temporarily, by drawings, commentary, and other forms of written and illustrated expression.

“More Love: Art, Politics, and Sharing since the 1990s” at the Ackland Art Museum is the first major exhibition to investigate the ways in which contemporary artists have addressed love as a political force, as a philosophical model for equitable knowledge exchange, and as social interaction within a rapidly changing landscape of technology and social media.

Organized by consulting curator Claire Schneider, “More Love” includes 48 works of art by 33 emerging and established contemporary artists who actively engage with love and the many ways it can be expressed through beauty, emotion, humor, texts, elaborate craft, sound environments, and interactive projects. For each of these artists, love is a significant tool or strategy that constitutes a creative practice built on generosity, inclusiveness, sharing, and questioning.

The Ackland Art Museum is located on the historic campus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Ackland’s holdings consist of more than 16,000 works of art, featuring significant collections of European masterworks, twentieth-century and contemporary art, African art, North Carolina pottery, and folk art. In addition, the Ackland has North Carolina’s premier collections of Asian art and works on paper (drawings, prints, and photographs). As an academic unit of the University, the Ackland serves broad local, state, and national constituencies.

The Ackland Art Museum is located on South Columbia Street, near the corner of East Franklin Street, on the campus of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Parking is available at several nearby municipal and private parking decks, and at meters on Franklin Street.

More information is available by calling 919/966-5736 or visiting (www.ackland.org).

Although usually thought of as individualist swordfighters and rigid adherents to the honorable Bushido code of ethics, Japan’s pre-modern warriors, the samurai, were profoundly social animals. This talk will illustrate the role of art in the interactions between elite warriors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a particular focus on banqueting, gift-giving, and other forms of politicized sociability.

Presented in connection with the exhibition Pictures of Vanity Fair: The Traditional Japanese Print, on view through Jan. 6, 2013.

RSVP to by e-mail to (acklandRSVP@unc.edu). Free to members and valid UNC One Card holders or $5 for all others.

Ackland Art Museum at UNC- Chapel Hill, NC, will present the lecture, “Colors of Confinement: Rare Color Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II”, by Eric Muller, of University of North Carolina School of Law, on Oct. 10, 2012, at 2pm.

In 1942, Bill Manbo (1908-1992) and his family were forced from their Hollywood home into a Japanese American internment camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. While there, Manbo documented both the bleakness and beauty of his surroundings, using Kodachrome film, a technology then just seven years old, to capture community celebrations and to record his family’s struggle to maintain a normal life under the harsh conditions of racial imprisonment. In this talk, Eric Muller will present a number of Manbo’s photographs and talk about what they show – and what they conceal – about the wartime imprisonment of Japanese Americans.

Eric L. Muller is the Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law and director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Center for Faculty Excellence. He is author of “American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II” and “Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II”.

Free to Ackland Members and $10 each for Members’ guests. Reservation required; e-mail to (acklandRSVP@unc.edu).

Following his talk, Muller will be signing his new monograph of the same title at the Ackland Museum Store.

The Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC, is offering a lecture by Professor Susan Napier of Japanese Language & Literature, at Tufts University will present “Fire and Water: The Apocalyptic Imagination of Hayao Miyazaki”, on Thursday, Oct. 4, 2012, at 5:30pm, in the Nelson Mandela Auditorium, Fed Ex Global Education Center, located at 301 Pittsboro Street, UNC-Chapel Hill.

Napier will explore the artistic productions of Hayao Miyazaki (“Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away”). Napier is the author of “Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation,” as well as “From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Western Imagination”.

The talk will be followed by a screening of Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies” (1988) at 7pm.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

This event is made possible by the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies; UNC College of Arts and Sciences; UNC Global; the UNC-Chapel Hill Department of Asian Studies; the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; Shirley Drechsel and Wayne Vaughn; and the Ackland Art Museum.

The Ackland Art Museum at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, NC, is offering two educational events including:

On Saturday, Apr. 28, 2012, from 11am-2pm – Slow Art Day at the Ackland. One day each year – this year on Saturday, Apr. 28 – people all over the world will visit local museums and galleries to look at a small number of pre-selected works of art for 5 to 10 minutes each. After their individual viewing, participants meet together over lunch to talk about their experience. Simple by design, the goal is to focus as much attention as possible on the art and the art of seeing. Participants not only benefit from their viewing experience, but are empowered by being a part of the collective experience. Amanda Hughes leads the Ackland’s Slow Art Day experience. Art viewing: 11am-1pm. Lunch: 1-2pm at Spanky’s Restaurant, Franklin Street. Program is free and open to the public; participants pay for the cost of their lunch. Register at (http://slowartackland2012.eventbrite.com/).

On Wednesday, May 2, 2012, from noon-1pm – Art For Lunch: “‘We All Grew Up in That Life’: Thornton Dial’s Politics on Paper”. Bring a bag lunch and enjoy an hour of inspiration and information about art in the Ackland’s collection. This month, Juan Logan, Professor of Studio Art, Art Department, UNC-Chapel Hill discusses “‘We All Grew Up in That Life’: Thornton Dial’s Politics on Paper”. Where: Ackland Art Museum. Cost: Free to members and valid UNC One Card holders | $5 non-members. Registration required: e-mail to (acklandRSVP@unc.edu) or call 919/843-3687.